Speaker 0 00:00:00 Here at O logic, we make robotics from concept to reality.
Speaker 2 00:00:11 Hello everyone. And welcome to the robot industry podcast. I'm excited to have Ted Larson from O logic on the podcast today. Ted welcome.
Speaker 0 00:00:19 Thank you. It's great to be here, Jim.
Speaker 2 00:00:21 So you are the CEO and co-founder of old logic, Inc. And you're an embedded systems research and development company with a focus on robotic applications and technologies. You've over 30 years of experience designing and building commercial software applications. And your current interests are in the areas of robotics, artificial intelligence, embedded systems in consumer and professional electronic devices. Ted graduated from California Polytechnic state university with his BS and Ms degrees in computer science. He's worked on numerous robotics projects with leading corporations, including Google Hasbro, Savi, Oak, and Panasonic. Ted has spoken at several of the past robo business expose the annual Silicon valley conference that has helped business leaders understand where the market's going and which is assisted in implementing their robotics vision within their organization. So I'm excited to, uh, have you here today and excited for the conversation.
Speaker 0 00:01:18 Yeah, me too,
Speaker 2 00:01:20 Ted. So what do you do at O logic?
Speaker 0 00:01:22 I am the CEO. I spend a lot of my time with both the customers and our engineering teams, trying to keep projects on track, feed our customer expectations. Some of the big programs that we've been working on in the last year are not only, uh, helping customers, uh, do you know, robotic work, which would be the insides of the robot, but we've also been doing a lot of work on, we have an a I T edge compute service that we've just launched, where we have, uh, an evaluation kit that we are, uh, uh, distributing and being able to, uh, provide, uh, more interesting ways to move IOT or AI related applications to the edge also to helping customers moving from design to manufacturing. We're good at, at, um, you know, doing what was considered like NPI work, which is new product introduction. And we're really good at, uh, helping our customers do DFM for high volume manufacturing. So those are all the reasons people come to us. And those are the things that I end up doing every day, all day, either evangelizing the services that we provide here or, uh, helping customers be successful in their projects.
Speaker 2 00:02:39 And you've had their really rare experience of working with lots of companies in all kinds of different industries and especially the toy industry, which is kind of a fun start,
Speaker 0 00:02:48 Right? Yeah. I mean, I would say that, um, that's kind of where we got our start. We started in 2005, so I've been doing this for 17 years now. And our first big customer was Hasbro. We did a lot of, uh, toy work for them. We moved on to doing more and more toy work for other people like Mattel and other people. And then we branched out into more consumer electronic device work, and then we started doing more and more big mobile robot work. And we, you know, had the advantage of being here in Silicon valley and seeing the rise and fall of wheel garage and being able to all those great smart people that worked at wheel garage. They moved on to other mobile robot companies later on after, uh, it went away. And a lot of those people that we knew from there ended up building mobile robots and then calling us for help with their electronics design for their, uh, for the robot that they're working on. And so,
Speaker 2 00:03:49 So
Speaker 0 00:03:50 Exciting.
Speaker 2 00:03:50 That is very exciting. And so where do you usually get involved? I understand certainly in the early prototype work, but now, especially with, uh, industrial robots and doing a lot of work in mobility, kind of do they call you at different phases or do they call you at the very beginning?
Speaker 0 00:04:06 We tend to end up in all different, uh, spots. We do work a lot with early stage startups doing, you know, proof of concept or MVP work. We also do a lot of work with like corporate R and D groups that are trying to do some kind of prototyping or validation of some thing that they're trying to stand up inside of their organization and they don't have the manpower to do it themselves, and they just need somebody with expertise. We also, uh, you know, uh, have worked with people that have well established products and maybe they're looking to do a next generation version of it. And then the third kind of area where we tend to get involved is what I would call like a rescue job, where somebody has a product that they've built. And then now they're trying to turn around and turn that into something that's producible in volume.
Speaker 0 00:04:54 And that ends up getting us involved to help do the DFM, to make it easier to produce, easier to manufacture. So we do, we do all of that. And I would say also too, most of our customers are local here in Silicon valley. I, I would say that's where the bulk of them are, but then we've also been doing projects with customers elsewhere in the world, uh, in, you know, in the east and then outta the country too. So it's, uh, been pretty exciting actually to be able to be involved in the robotics industry. It's really turned into this amazing thing in the last 15 years.
Speaker 2 00:05:28 Yes. We both picked the right industries for sure.
Speaker 0 00:05:30 Right. That's right.
Speaker 2 00:05:32 So what have been some really challenging jobs? I mean, everybody's coming in at different times with you, but have there been some challenging ones that you've kind of top of mind?
Speaker 0 00:05:42 So kind of depends on the project. Usually it's a problem with being able to, um, help people do the DFM tasks. Usually that's, that's where, where it becomes hard. A lot of people that are building, uh, robotic products perhaps have never designed or built an actual product before, uh, they're good at building prototypes or they, maybe they come out of academia and they've never run a product company before, or they're, they're building their first product that they're gonna ship and have to reproduce where they're not just making one of it, but they're gonna make thousands of them. You know, what do you do to get there? We're really good at identifying the problems and then understanding all the implications in the robotics and then figuring out like how to take that into manufacturing. And so the hardest problems usually are ones where the customers weigh down the way down the path, and then we have to go in and, um, help them redesign it so that they can actually, uh, make it, make it makeable.
Speaker 0 00:06:45 Sometimes I would say rescue job projects are generally that the hardest, because usually the customer wants to be further along in their timeline than they actually are. And it's kinda a hard reality in some cases to, it feels like they're taking a step back and, you know, we wanna be able to help them meet where they wanna go in the timeline, wanna get there, but some people feel like they're further along than they actually are. And then when we get involved, we it's a hard reality sometimes for some, uh, founders of startups and things like that sometimes.
Speaker 2 00:07:16 So on their minds, on some of your customer minds are certainly scalability, uh, product cost and picking some of the right manufacturers. What else are they thinking about? Are they thinking about, I imagine safety.
Speaker 0 00:07:28 Yeah. They're, uh, they're thinking about safety, another, uh, huge thing. That's really a common thing is figuring out like design for manufacturing in a way where the costing can be done properly. Uh, I think a lot of people don't have any understanding of like, uh, how you get the costs out of a product, uh, when you're working on it and then, um, helping them manage their supply chain better. Uh, in some cases I would also say that with the current economy, the way that it is with, we have seen a lot of projects where the projects are having big trouble, being able to source parts because of the supply chain issues in the world. And, uh, the shortages of important electronic components that they would typically, we typically, you know, reach into the toolbox and say, these are the typical kinds of components we put in a mobile robot. We're getting a lot of projects also too lately where people are having to go back and redesign something because they have to put, redo it in a way where it's made of source parts we've have become pretty good at like helping to, uh, shift, uh, people to a more source supply chain. So those are the kinds of things that, um, we are typically getting involved in every day.
Speaker 2 00:08:44 It sounds like, uh, a big challenge and a lot of fun too. Are you seeing more, maybe manufacturing coming back to north America?
Speaker 0 00:08:51 Yes. We've seen a bunch of that. We've seen people maybe doing sub assemblies in Asia. There's also, people have been moving out of, uh, China. Uh, in some cases they're moving to Vietnam or their, uh, or Philippines, uh, or India. Uh, we have some, uh, customers that are standing up there, manufacturing operations in India, and then, but then maybe they do a piece of it there. And then we do the, you know, there's a local contract manufacturer here in the valley. That's maybe doing a part of it. So they're maybe, you know, sourcing pieces from all over the world, but then the fine assemblies happening here, those are all possible. It really depends on the volume, uh, of what they're gonna make. Usually it doesn't make sense to take a product outside of the us, unless you're gonna do more than about 5,000 pieces that is shot. And, you know, some people, depending on the product or the project that they're working on, they can't meet those MOQs. And so they they're kind of need to do it here. Uh, we have some really great relationships with local manufacturers that are, uh, helping many of our robot customers, uh, today. So,
Speaker 2 00:09:58 So I wanted to switch the conversation and talk a little bit about kind of your staff and working at or logic because it must be like a big sandbox, right? For anybody who's interested in robotics that, uh, it's super interesting projects and great customers.
Speaker 0 00:10:12 It is. Uh, and the, the big advantage that, you know, and the big recruitment pitch that I give as to why people might wanna work here is why would you go work at a, a company that's making a product? And well, I guess you could, you, you might want to go there if you're interested in going deep and staying for, you know, a couple of years to work on a single product, but here, you know, we probably do 10 or 15 products a year. It gives our, uh, engineering team an opportunity to touch and get involved and understand this large problem set of we're doing all kinds of different pieces for different customers. So, you know, in the robotics industry, we're doing battery chargers and motor controllers and power control units and sensor arrangements, and, uh, you know, being able to figure out how to do that massive integration. So then that way, uh, we can help the customer pull off delivering their end product. And, uh, it's exciting, uh, because people are getting to touch different things every week. You can build a really broad portfolio of expertise just spending a year or two here. We we've had some, uh, engineers that have, have been here for a couple of years, and then they go off somewhere else. They go to work at some other robot company or whatever, and it's a pretty significant badge to have had worked here on your resume.
Speaker 2 00:11:36 Oh yes, absolutely. Cuz you could like, like you say, work on 20 or 30 projects and in all kinds of different areas. So what are your employees like? What are some of their skill sets?
Speaker 0 00:11:46 The big items that, uh, we're usually recruiting for are people that are electrical engineers that, uh, have experience, you know, drawing schematics and laying out boards and debugging them. That's typical kind of like the entry bar. We're very, um, process oriented here. So we kind of have our own way of like doing everything. We do have a pretty good size team, so we have to collaborate and work on things together. And you know, it's not a lot of these things. You can't do it by yourself. You needing to do it with a team. Uh, we also have a lot of, uh, software people that are focused on the low level stuff, bare metal items, uh, all the way up the stack to like embedded Linux. And then obviously Ross, we're doing a lot of, we do a lot of, uh, Ross driver work and helping to integrate Ross into applications and then being able to control hardware that may be designed.
Speaker 0 00:12:39 So, and again, our, our core competency is kind of like bespoke hardware and software work for the inside of, you know, robotic products. That's what most people come to us for. Uh, they don't wanna be building a product that's made up of a bunch of off the shelf items that are expensive and maybe don't need all their needs. So we help them build a very product focused centric thing that is the inside of their product that they can manufacture and that they can own and, uh, where they can also own the supply chain for it and, and, you know, have some control over their own destiny.
Speaker 2 00:13:15 And what kind of, like you met were mentioning some of the tools that you have or tools that you use, what are some of those things that your people will be using every day?
Speaker 0 00:13:23 Uh, so for electrical engineering, uh, for like ed, uh, which is, you know, electronic design automation, we are primarily in, we use LTM here. Uh, and then, um, we do a lot of high speed design, uh, for doing like these high speed cameras or, um, these edge OT devices are usually have DDR four memory in them or MIPI CSI or, uh, USB three, one super speed. We have to be able to simulate that electronically and be able to do SI and PI, uh, simulation. So we, I think we're one of the smallest design shops in Silicon valley that has a cadence license and we have a great, um, partnership with cadence. Uh, we actually, uh, have given talks and things at their developer conferences on some of the interesting things that we use their tool set for when designing high speed things. And then also to on the, on the mechanical engineering side, we do have some mechanical engineers and we have an ID guy too.
Speaker 0 00:14:26 Uh, we usually use solid works for that. And then when we get into other things that are outside of our expertise domain, which we'd be things like thermal profiling or heavy duty mechanical simulation or, uh, FCC approvals or things like that, uh, we have partners with, uh, third parties, uh, that, that do a lot of that stuff. And, um, but we do also do, uh, a lot of compliance work. So a lot, you know, you can't really ship a product unless the compliance is working. And so those would be things like UL, FCC, certs, wifi Alliance, Bluetooth, SIG, where we have a great test lab partner, uh, down the street from us and where we can help our customer go get all the certs and oversee all of the, uh, the compliance tests that need to be run. We, we kinda, we kinda do it all. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:15:18 Very nice. So what, in general, what robot technology is kind of high up on your radar? Is it AI and GPS or 5g? What what's kind of like,
Speaker 0 00:15:27 Yeah, so the, the, the, um, the hot technology that's the highest on our list is what we call, um, edge IOT. So this would be doing AI out on the edge on like vision processing or vision systems where the robot's able to do it without actually having to send that stuff to the cloud, to go have it done there. We have a, an extremely strong partnership right now with media tech. We are there what we call an IDH, which is an independent design house, uh, for us and Europe. And we're able to do, uh, chip down design with our latest system on chips. These are, it's basically phone and tablet guts going into, uh, items. And, uh, but that, that aren't phones and tablets <laugh> right. So, uh, and, uh, we're using them in robotics. And then we're also using them in a lot of, um, other, uh, non phone and tablet things that are kind of like a robot, but they're not.
Speaker 0 00:16:28 So these would be things like connected fitness equipment or home appliances, you know, a home appliance in some cases is a robot <laugh>. So we're, you know, we're doing, uh, some of the stuff there, heavy duty computer vision tasks. Those are the things that we're really, really excited with, um, help doing that with media tech. And then we're also partnered with, on Cindy conductor for, uh, vision and, uh, we're working with them to do, um, bring their camera, uh, products into product designs that we do. And then, uh, last big partner we have in the space is Intel. We're partnered with them on the real sense. I think we're the only design house on the Intel real sensee, uh, website, uh, that Intel recommends. And, uh, we've a lot of work with real sense. And we're big booster.
Speaker 2 00:17:16 How long does a project take? I know that's kind of like asking how long a piece of string is.
Speaker 0 00:17:21 It's very nebulous. Uh, I would say typical customer engagements can be as short as like 60 to 90 days, but, um, you know, we have like people that have hired us to help them do a whole robot and usually whole robot projects take, you know, a year or more or two. Um, it really depends. And it also depends on how much engineering resources the customer has bearing on the problem too. And whether or not we're just augmenting their team or we're being made responsible for the entire, you know, end product
Speaker 2 00:17:55 Delivery either it's a short string or a long string. Right. So right. No, that, that's great though. It's very interesting. So end. Uh, so how do customers get in touch with you? Like, do they, is it the CEO? Is it the board member? Is it, uh, engineer? Is it everyone
Speaker 0 00:18:09 It's usually everyone, I would say for years and years and years, the primary way that we would get new customers, uh, was through this just enormous network of people that I know I've had other consultancies that don't do so much robotics work. I've had people there ask me, Ted gee, wow, you get all these high profile robot projects, you know, what's your marketing strategy. And I'm like, well, my marketing strategy is the phone rings and I pick it up and it's somebody I know who's wanting to hire me to do a robot. Uh, that used to be the bulk of our marketing strategy. Although lately we've been doing a lot of partner, uh, ship work where, because we're partnered with Intel and on and media tech, they're, you know, helping us introduce us to people that have customer, uh, needs that we might not have found on our own.
Speaker 0 00:19:00 So we are in a place now lately where we're getting a lot more of these kind of like random introductions that we had, not necessarily, we might not have found on our own because you know, it wasn't somebody that knew me or knew somebody that knew me or knew what we were about. So that's been a, I think a big thing, uh, in the last year, year and a half, we're also a lot more active on social media. That's something that, you know, uh, had been a, some somewhat of a, a surprise to me is like, well, you know, how do you do social media marketing for our robotics consultancy? I would've never thought that that that was a, that that would help us. And it's actually helped us tremendously. It's, it's helped with brand awareness and people understanding what we do and people wanna see pictures and stories about cool robotic projects that we might be working.
Speaker 0 00:19:51 That we're about. That's another problem too, in general, with marketing a consultancy like this is that, uh, most people don't want us talking about what they're doing for, uh, for them. And so we have to find the friendly customers that are interested in having us promote the things that we're doing for them while we're doing it. It's funny when you see our social media presence or you see our website, it's like a tip of a huge iceberg that is most of it's below the water that you can't see and, you know, you, it was only usually much, much later on that you found out you find out, oh, they actually, you know, Elijah actually did the inside of this thing. It's, it's kind of funny that way. But my biggest excitement of working here in general is that is we can work on a thing and then it'll be a big secret project. And then sometime in the future, it ends up going out into the real world. And then we see it. And then, uh, and then it's like, oh my gosh, you know, I'll be in, there are products on the shelf at the apple store that we designed the inside of. And it's a real thrill to like be in there and see products that we, we worked on and see them out of the real world and see people gaining benefit from the design work that we did.
Speaker 2 00:21:09 Yeah. It's really exciting. And you're right. That we sign a lot of non-disclosure agreements all the time and it doesn't really help us sometimes when it comes to, to marketing.
Speaker 0 00:21:17 Right.
Speaker 2 00:21:19 So when you're not billing robots or fixing them, uh, what do you like to do when you're off time?
Speaker 0 00:21:24 Well, let's see. Uh, I'm probably not as balanced than individual as I should be. I do, I am a little bit of a workaholic, but some of the things that I really like to do on, uh, when I'm not working is I like, uh, cooking and I like, um, spending time with my family. My daughter has been raising chickens. Uh, so we've been having a lot of fun, uh, with her raising these chickens. And, you know, usually I try to like find some ways to relax, maybe get out of town, uh, with the pandemic. It's been a little bit challenging with that. Um, I've been an avid skier my entire life, and we do spend a lot of time in Tahoe where we can, we're hoping that we're gonna finally have a little more snow here because, uh, it's been pretty dry since December <laugh> so, yeah,
Speaker 2 00:22:11 Well, that's great. And, um, how can people get in touch with you? They like what they heard here today,
Speaker 0 00:22:16 So they can just come to our website, uh, and it's logic inc.com. That's O do com don't go to logic.com. There's some domain squadron who's been sitting on it for 20 years, go to our website. There's some info forms on there that you can fill out and submit it. And one of our people will get back to you and engage you about your product and your need, and you know, what you wanna do.
Speaker 2 00:22:43 Thanks. So, so much Ted for, uh, for taking your time today.
Speaker 0 00:22:46 Yeah, it's awesome. Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:22:49 Our sponsor for this episode is Airhart automation systems. Airhart builds and commissions turnkey solutions for their worldwide clients. With over 80 years of precision manufacturing, they understand the complex world of robotics, automated manufacturing, and project management, delivering world class custom automation on time and on budget contact one of their sales engineers to see what Airhart can build for you and their
[email protected] and Airhart is spelled E H R H a R D T. And I'd like to thank our partner, a three, the association for advancing automation. They're the leading automation trade association for robotics, vision and imaging motion control and motors, and the industrial artificial intelligence technologies visit automate.org to learn more. And I'd like to thank our partner painted robot painted robot builds and integrates digital solutions. They're a web development firm that offers SEO, digital and social marketing, and can set up and connect CRM and other E R P tools to unify marketing sales and operations. And you can find
[email protected]. And if you'd like to get in touch with us at the robot industry podcast and by us, I mean me, you can find me Jim Beretta on LinkedIn. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Be safe out there. Today's podcast was produced by customer attraction, industrial marketing, and I'd like to thank my nephew, Chris gray for the music, my partner, Janet, our partner's a three painted robot and our sponsor Airhart automation systems.
